Elijah Wood's got the wide eyes, for sure - those famously big, round, crystal-blue peepers of his. So, until he starts showing up on set in sunglasses, he'll have that innocent thing going, too. "Plus, I don't exactly look my age," jokes the boyish 24-year-old, whose newly grown-in chin stubble and 6-inch sideburns make him look a little like a high-school senior with beer-buying aspirations.

Wood was in Midtown last week to talk about his two new releases, "Green Street Hooligans," which opened two days ago, and "Everything is Illuminated," which opens this coming Friday. The former is the split-lip adventures of an American swept up in the East London world of pubs and soccer punch-ups. The latter is the quiet, quirky tale of a young man's search for the Ukrainian mystery woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis.

But both films follow in the sure-fire storytelling tradition of "Candide," Mark Twain and "E.T." - take an innocent and send him abroad.

And who could be more innocent than the saucer-eyed Wood? "In many of my roles, I'm taken on some sort of journey," he says. Wood's been landing these hit-the-road movies ever since he left Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at age 8 with his mom to audition at an L.A. talent showcase.

That's all the way from his breakthrough in 1994's "North," as an ignored little kid who roams the planet in search of new parents, to the epic "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, as a hobbit who treks Middle Earth to fling a pernicious piece of jewelry into the fires of Mount Doom.

So, after 16 years of what amounts to a series of on-location working vacations, does Wood even have a home?

"I bought a house by the beach in L.A. in October," he says, "but it's kind of a mess. I haven't unpacked yet. Everything's still in boxes."

That's 11 months, Elijah.

"Part of it is that there's not a lot of built-in storage," he says, unconvincingly.

Stacked on the floor and atop an eclectic mix of modern and old craftsman furniture in his Venice Beach house are cardboard boxes full of books, CDs, DVDs and video games. One of those boxes is even stuffed with "Lord of the Rings" mementos like Frodo's sword, the ring and some prosthetic hobbit feet.

"I guess it's true," he says, "L.A. is home. It's where my mom and brother and sister live. It's where my friends are, and it's where I go when I'm not working. But something I haven't done in my life is to define my own space. I don't get properly settled. I get distracted."

He also gets work, plenty of it.

After taking the lead in "Everything is Illuminated," the Liev Schreiber-directed adaptation of a best-selling novel by young author Jonathan Safran Foer, Wood jetted off to the Czech Republic for two months.

He rented an apartment on a narrow little lane in Prague's Old Town Square.

"It was such a cool experience learning to adapt and get along with people that can't relate to you,"he says. "Other than the tourists, most of the people don't recognize you. Plus, nobody there speaks much English."

Especially not the cute Czech barmaid who worked downstairs from Elijah's apartment.

"After work I'd often come down and get a takeaway pizza and a couple of beers. It was a great place, just locals hanging out there," he says. "Anyway, I'd have these little moments of shared recognition, these interactions with this one barmaid.

"Chatting her up was impossible, but it's beautiful when you can actually speak without using language. Finally, one night she sat down for a half-hour, and we spoke through, like, three other people. I was being translated to Czech, and she was being translated to English."

So, did it work?

"I wasn't really flirting," he says. "I was genuinely interested in asking her where she was from and what she was studying in school and other things."

Right, uh-huh. So, did it work?

"Also, another interesting thing when you're a foreigner in a place like Prague is learning how cabbies try and stiff you for money," he says, making a sharp turn in the conversation and stiffing us on the barmaid story. "They'll tell you 200 Czech crowns and then take a long route and charge you, like, 500 crowns."

"Everything is Illuminated" director Schreiber says Wood was a perfect fit to play Jonathan, an awkward and confused young American who travels to the Ukraine countryside in search of identity.

"I wanted someone who was diminutive and vulnerable and innocent," says the first-time director. "He had to be someone you would want to help. That was an articulation of an American character that I felt the rest of the world was unfamiliar with, and Elijah embodies all of that to me.

"Also, when you have a character who's primarily an observer, the eyes are very important. They say that eyes are the portal to the soul, and Elijah's got garage doors."

His work in "Green Street Hooligans," in addition to sending him off to England and teaching him West Ham United fight songs, also offered Wood a new acting opportunity.

As his timid Yank transplant, Matt Buckner, falls in with East London soccer yobs and starts throwing punches outside West Ham matches, it's as if Wood himself is taking a shot at shedding the perception of boyish innocence.

The black eyes help, too.

"That transition fascinated me, the responsibility of making the arc believable, that's the challenge," he says. "My interest is moving into a position where I'm perceived as more of an adult." Wood recently contributed his voice to the animated penguin movie "Happy Feet" and signed on for a small part in a film called "Bobby" that Emilio Estevez is directing about intertwining stories all taking place in L.A.'s Ambassador Hotel the night Robert F. Kennedy was killed. He's also in the early pre-production stages of an Iggy Pop biopic, in which he's slated to play the punk legend. Otherwise, Wood plans on spending the next few leisurely months thumbing through scripts and checking out rock bands for his planned start-up label Simian Records.

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Re:Acting his age« Reply #8 on: September 11, 2005, 01:23:47 pm »

that really is a great article. i like it when he talks about other things, other than what the movies are about, because we already know all that. so the little personal stories about boxes piled up, etc, are cute.

I'm sorry but I don't agree. We're joking about cleaning his house but in reality, it's Elijah who should be doing this first and foremost, not all alone of course, she can help him, but it's not her job to clean his house.